Ed's story: part two

Ed shared his first personal story in 2010. We catch-up with him now 24-years old, where he tells us about tremor going to university and going into the work place.

If there is one place where no one will care if you have a tremor, it’s university. It’s possibly the most all-accepting place you go to if you decide to go. Sure, you’ll get the odd remark and when you meet a lot of new people it can be embarrassing to explain it…maybe the first 6 times, then you’ll get over it, trust me.

The amount of new people you will meet will quickly make it commonplace, and no one will bat an eyelid. I mean, one person I met thought I was an alcoholic but that may have just been because I only ever saw them in the university bar, it’s hard to tell.

In terms of part-time jobs, I had some really bad ones during my university summers. Living near the Henley Royal Regatta and desperate for some holiday pub money. I think the worst one I was given was working at a café. I struggle with one cup of tea or coffee, let alone a saucer, so to be given a tray of six espressos with saucers was a largely pointless exercise.

Then it came time for the dreaded moment when I left university. I went for my first interview at a publishing company, my hands shaking like there was no tomorrow. I remember this interview vividly for two reasons. Firstly, because the moment I opened the door a dalmatian jumped on me, something I was not expecting and, with my fear of dogs at the time, didn’t exactly help assuage my nerves. Secondly, because it was the job I got and am still at today. But I remember what my now boss said when I told him about my shaky hands. He looked at me and just said ‘Everyone has things they have to deal with, when can you start?’

Now, three-ish years later, and still work there. I do a lot of varied jobs there, including shooting and editing video. Yes, video. Imagine going up to your boss and explaining that you’d love to go and film some things to create informative videos for kids, but you physically can’t hold a camera still. But that hasn’t stopped me and I have since shot video from the Canadian border to the Mexican border through Midwest America.

Now, there are days when my hands drive me crazy. I went to an important meeting for work this week and I was trying to give a presentation where my hands were all over the place. I tried to show something on a laptop, and ended up closing the whole presentation.

Some days you want to just scream, and I have many a time.

I think to fall back on the excuse of ‘I can’t because of my tremor’ is the easiest thing to do. You should be able to say ‘I did it in spite of my tremor’. Challenge yourself. The two I’ve done are rather easy examples of this – I love to do writing but I can’t really hold a pen. So I learnt how to touch-type and now I can type faster than most people write. I wanted to go and do videos for my company but I can’t hold a camera still, so I researched equipment that I could ask the company to buy so that I could still create footage. I’m not under the pretence that all things are this easy, and many of them can’t be done. But trying is the important bit.